In a world which preaches not to judge people by their outer appearance, it still surprises me how much attention we give to the cover. We always strive to be best dressed, buy the best house in the best neighborhood, eat in a fancy restaurant, get the best car possible, marry the best (okay may be I am going a little over board with this.) But you get the point.

No matter how much we try, there is still a part of us that is judgmental based on the appearance of a person, place or thing. Long time ago, I was working for this team on a tight schedule project and my boss had hired 3 new interns to join the team to help me out. When the 3 people arrived, at once I thought one of them will be a good fit since he communicated better than the rest. As days passed by I realized that the one who did not talk much turned out to be a good resource while the one who spoke more, was only interested in talking than working.

A friend once told me about an incident in a salon. He went to get his haircut at this saloon run and he felt that the person did a lousy job and did not attend to him properly as opposed to another guy who was able to speak to her and was more aligned to her personality. Needless to say, he never went back to that saloon again.

I was out looking for properties few weeks ago and out of all the parameters that you look for a house, one thing that is most important is the appearance. This is one such thing that works as an exception to “Don’t judge by the cover” rule. Sometimes neighborhood can give a good picture of the area especially if you intend to live there for the rest of your life.

Bottom line is, we need to give everything a chance. People often say that first impression matters a lot and I totally disagree with that. Judging someone based on the first impression is not fair, always give the person, place, situation another, don’t be too quick to come into a conclusion and judge somebody without knowing them.